Education Without Truth in Postmodern Perspectivism

https://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Cont/ContDeli.htm

by webdva • 6 years ago

27 57 6 years ago

More explicitly, according to Rorty, the schemes and patterns regulating social relations do not derive from reason and its canonicity but rather from self-images created by the community on the basis of solidarity of its members. (7) In opposition to reason and its norms, solidarity does not need any justification or legitimation given that the social bond expressed by it is prior to any act of legitimizing claims to truth attempted by reason.

And this kind of idiotic thinking leads to a broken society where we are conditioned from childhood to pretend that all cultures are equal and that all differences are purely social constructions.

Except for the most pampered societies, cultural norms are at least partly a manifestation of successful survival strategies in different environments. They are emergent and based in the truths of reality that postmodernists delude themselves into believing do not exist. No patriarchy necessary.

The modern deconstructive movements that were spawned by postmodernism have effectively become rebellion for the sake of rebellion. Progress for the sake of progress. Anything we do differently from our ancestors is automatically superior - that's why these movements have such draw from young, vulnerable, naive, college aged children. The only truth in these movements is deliberate change - but thousands of years of development of civilization has infused our various cultures with a wealth of heuristics which postmodernists (and modern leftist movements which are postmodernist offspring) cannot acknowledge because their definition of truth is backwards and, frankly, unscientific.

danharaj5• 6 years ago

And this kind of idiotic thinking leads to a broken society where we are conditioned from childhood to pretend that all cultures are equal and that all differences are purely social constructions.

You don't read the thinkers you are calling idiots and you don't understand what you cited.

Truth is in mathematics

Of all the human activities concerning truth, mathematics has the easiest time demonstrating its limitations, its inherent circularity, and the fact that in its absolute form it is ultimately out of reach for human beings. Your vulgar High Rationality is built on sand.

twomoretime4• 6 years ago

You don't read the thinkers you are calling idiots and you don't understand what you cited.

I am not calling these philosophers idiots, I am saying that they encourage dangeous thinking.

The OP quotes:

Patterns regulating social relations do not derive from reason.

And what I'm saying is that they partly do, as emergent adaptations to reality, except in pampered cultures where comforts erase impetus.

I deleted the part about mathematics because it was no longer applicable to what I ended up writing.

Your vulgar High Rationality is built on sand

My high rationality is built on the observation that a large swath of people actually believe that there is little value in the cultural norms of old. I used to feel similarly. Then I grew up. My vulgarity is built on frustration with the modern state of the world and the headstrong ignorance of the young adult population in the US. Here's a case in point - ignorant young people would be less uppity if they were taught to show amount some respect to elders. Not blindly, but in the US we seem to have lost an appreciation for the experience that comes with age.

yters2• 6 years ago

If math isn't true, how are you typing this?

AnimalMuppet2• 6 years ago

You could offer more than just "you don't know, and you don't understand". You could offer some knowledge and understanding.

It's fine to complain that critics of postmodernism don't understand it. But to not then explain looks a lot like hiding from criticism. "You don't understand, but I'm right and you're wrong" is not a productive conversation. It's smug arrogance that assumes its own superiority but won't actually engage with critics.

dang2• 6 years ago

Please stop taking HN threads further into ideological and nationalistic flamewar. We already asked you this. It destroys what this site exists for, so we ban accounts that do it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

twomoretime4• 6 years ago

Hi dang, Let me preface this by thanking you for the effort you've put into building this unique and invaluable community.

I'm sorry to occasionally make your life difficult, as you mention this isn't the first time I've been disciplined.

I recognize the pressures that lead you to censor certain accounts - however given the amount of soft power that you wield, I would kindly ask you to keep in mind that consistently and primarily suppressing only one set of views, which are potentially held by 25-50% of the population, breeds extremism.

The fact that these rational views are effectively banned from every major platform only forces the polarization that we are witnessing in our society.

danharaj5• 6 years ago

This piece of writing assumes a very well read background on the authors it is discussing and I don't think it does anything but bait the hackernews middlebrow dismissal of postmodern thinkers.

api5• 6 years ago

I keep seeing this retort but I never see anyone explain where those who criticize postmodernism are wrong nor do I see a clearer explanation of postmodernist ideas. I just see content-free dismissals like "middle-brow" and re-iterations of similar word salad to the link posted here.

Tell me on what basis a postmodernist would argue against a Klansman.

IMHO pomo is the humanities' analog to what string theory is in physics or cryptocurrency hype is in tech: a trendy cancer that hijacked the minds of a generation and doesn't deliver anything.

It doesn't even deliver progress in the area of social justice. All the progress in social justice was made by previous generations of civil rights leaders and movements who were absolutely not postmodernists, cultural relativists, or believers in any strong form of identity politics. Social justice started to retreat culturally precisely when pomo and hard identity politics (a closely related ideology) took over academia: the 70s.

I mean liberals and other modern intellectuals have been asleep at the switch so long that monarchism is making a comeback. That's analogous to seeing measles outbreaks among anti-vaxxers.

AlotOfReading3• 6 years ago

Postmodernism is not a coherent philosophy so much as a reaction to the failures of positivism (i.e. everything can be scientifically justified). That's part of the reason you don't see clear explanations of postmodernism, because it's a vague nebulous cloud of things that are roughly related, rather than a singular school of thought. In that same vein, it doesn't make sense to talk about how a hypothetical "postmodernist" would respond to a klansman. Many different people would have radically different responses, ranging from complete condemnation, to contextual condemnation, to (rare) equanimity.

I don't intend this dismissively, but so much of your post suggests fundamental misunderstandings of what postmodernism is that it's difficult to have a discussion. Personally I found it easier to engage with understanding PM from the anthropology side, where they don't get as much into the ridiculous language used by the philosophy and the lit. people. Here's a simple introduction that goes over most of your questions in understandable terms without being insultingly simplified: https://anthropology.ua.edu/theory/postmodernism-and-its-cri...

quacked2• 6 years ago

I have a much less nuanced view of "postmodernists" [1]; without fail, every single person I know who's really leaned into any form of "postmodernism" and would describe themselves as such is depressed, nihilistic, and functionally not very useful. They typically don't participate in things I think are fundamentally necessary for society (namely food production and distribution, construction, medicine, and law), and many are also anti-natalist. On the whole I find that their social circles are filled with self-aggrandizing narcissists. (Not unique to philosophy, of course.)

I realize that criticizing a theory based on its adherents is puerile, but I can't help but notice that on the whole I find everything that comes from "postmodernists" to be distasteful and damaging to the "uneducated" person's mental well-being. Their architecture is bleak and divisive; their music is grating and non-melodic; their art is challenging and uncomfortable, and their philosophy is bleak and depressing.

[1] = I have put "postmodernists" and "postmodernism" in quotes because it seems pretty difficult to actually define what it is and who believes in it.

illiilliiililil6• 6 years ago

The pomo people telling the anti-pomo they just haven't the understanding is reminiscent of religious apologists/theologians telling atheist debaters they just haven't ground to stand on because they haven't adequately digested a sufficient body of obscure tomes to dismiss X religion. Or "You just haven't read the Koran in classical Arabic! Understanding Islam is beyond you."

danharaj5• 6 years ago

I'm not even pomo fam I just respect things I don't understand until I give them a fair shake.

tuyjrtkfeldc4• 6 years ago

No man, the texts are available, go read them. It takes time, effort and respect towards the perspectives of others to actually understand how complex things work, such as theories about human mind and social order.

Would you encourage someone with no experience in chemistry to start mixing chemicals without understanding potentially dangerous effects? Would you encourage someone who is not an engineer to construct a bridge without adequate preparation and planning? Experts can be authoritative because their experience grants them the ability to know better than non-experts in their respective fields.

sebastianconcpt• 6 years ago

Banal appeal to ignorance as an attempt to shout your mouth about the self-refuting pomo BS.

TomMckenny• 6 years ago

The article is an absurdly over the top straw-man and its target audience falls for it because they don't know that.

I could make an equally broad claim that Mormons believe absurd things. And when someone says I misunderstand Mormonism, I could claim that's just an appeal to ignorance.

People who don't believe in religious or cultural tolerance frequently float this conspicuously straw-man representation of those who believe in wider cultural tolerance. Typically using the ill-defined term "post modern". It's usually the same group that distrusts higher education and social criticism so a chance to attack them in an obfuscated way like this is doubly attractive.

cousin_it• 6 years ago

I argue that post-modern perspectivism and the individualistic or collectivistic logic which nurtures its scope can be transcended through construction of hyperperspectivistic prisms based on alogic of interrelation animated by the interdisciplinarian spirit prevailing in the field of modern science. This latter serves as the leading thread for the foundation of a new canonicity which, without losing its historical and cultural character, can make claims to truth and validity of general acceptance. The hyperspectivistic canonicity deriving from such an interrelational logic is in a position to animate a new educational model capable of overcoming both idealistic and romantic versions of Bildung.

Come on, this is self-parody.

https://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/wrongthoughts.html

scooble• 6 years ago

It doesn't strike me as obviously so. As I (probably mis-)understand it, the author is saying that if we take seriously the idea that people can have incompatible perspectives on the world then we can lose a notion of 'truth' that applies across perspectives - and this undermines ideas like education and learning. However, (it is claimed) science is special in that it can transcend perspectives and, if so, form a foundation for us to make sense of notions like education and learning while still taking perspectivism seriously.

I suspect it is a bit of a reach, but if the author wants to take perspectivism seriously without accepting the intuitive conclusions about education and learning, then this could be a promising approach to take.

ganzuul7• 6 years ago

There seems to be an awful lot of convergence (critical phenomena, maybe) happening in information processes (e.g. NNs). That must be what the author means by transcending perspectives.

azhu• 6 years ago

Agreed. What I get out of that is that we can get more useful info out of perspectivism if we look beyond just the individualism-collectivism way of framing perspective and consider how the fact that some scientists favor holding interdisciplinary perspectives so that they basically have more ingredients for their guts to cook up new hypotheses with implies that there exists an area of study where you examine the relationship between holding one or many perspectives and the conclusions that follow, which could serve as a less subjectively constrained way of thinking about thinking.

I also agree that this is borderline self parody because it's much too thick with itself to be an enjoyably stimulating read, at least for anyone who isn't well versed in the vernacular already. It also has a ton of typos given the level of language it's trying to use.

This turn has been facilitated by the lack of technical kwoledge
Strengthening of solidarity and conscesnsus

mahemm3• 6 years ago

Lots of people ITT seem to have an incorrect understanding of the term postmodernism. It basically boils down to the observation that history and human experience don't really move towards a single goal, but instead consists of lots of independent narratives going nowhere in particular.

These observations invalidate Modernist ideas that held that human historical development lead toward specific outcomes or followed observable patterns. For instance, postmodernist thought argues Marx was wrong in thinking that history followed a dialectical pattern, and instead holds that history follows no pattern.

ganzuul7• 6 years ago

I think that from mankind's innate curiosity and propensity to teach our young it is impossible to conclude that culture is without pattern. Like so, all of that seems invalidated.

I think that the mistake that postmodernism made was analogous to painting itself into a corner, where people fully studied culture from the outside without immersing themselves in it. They built abstractions until they no longer corresponded to observation and then concluded that there were contradictions in the subject of their study when there was none.

It rocked my world when out of the blue Regular Car-guy about-faced from a youtube hyuckster into a sleeper intellectual in relating the PT Cruiser with the modern world in the context of postmodernism. Zeitgeist, dumbed down to a car analogy without missing any of the salient points. It is some kind of perfection. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoxqtnI4I4c

mahemm3• 6 years ago

A postmodern critique of this argument might start with your identification of a single "culture" that has a pattern. Who decides what this culture is and who its adherents are? What if there are exemplars of the culture that do not fit this pattern; are they inherently excluded from the culture by the fact that they do not fit the pattern? If so, it may be the case that we are fitting a pattern we would like to see onto a culture that is in fact varied and diverse, and which does not in fact have a particular direction.

Education Without Truth in Postmodern Perspectivism

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